Trevor Noah: You Laugh But It’s True

Trevor Noah: You Laugh But It’s True

From the Township to the Stage

Day 1 Films

“People don’t really buy tickets until the day of the show so you don’t even know if you’ve sold enough until you literally walk out onto stage,�? Trevor Noah says in this David Paul Meyer-directed documentary. Of course, following the sold-out success of 2012’s That’s Racist we know that bums on seats in S.A. is no longer an issue for Noah. What does remain a challenge is creating a signature comedy style capable of sustaining an international career and extracting him from the soul-sapping pit of corporate gigs that a shot of Noah performing in front of a projector screen sums up (“Don’t you want to turn that off,�? Noah dolefully asks an unseen AV technician, clearly painfully aware of the impossibility of giving his best with a Microsoft logo floating above his head).

Tracing the build-up to his first one-man show, The Daywalker, You Laugh But It’s True captures the strangeness of Noah’s position as “coloured by colour, not by culture�?, and, through scenes of Noah visiting his mother, hints at a complicated relationship with the family that still forms much of his material. But it’s in sketching Noah’s rapid-fire rise in the South African comedy scene – and the ire it inspires in some of its veterans – that Meyer’s documentary comes up trumps. From the vantage point of a Jay Leno appearance, a Comedy Central special on its way and inroads on the international circuit, talk by David Newton, Mel Miller and even John Vlismas of Noah getting a break because of his colour comes off unattractively bitter.